New technologies have always enabled new criminals. Mail fraud laws in the United States date to 1872, suggesting that the first hundred years of national mail service in the country included a few felonious hiccups. Just 4 years later the telephone was invented. A new platform for new forms of fraud to which my grandparents’ generation is still particularly susceptible.
The first quarter of the 20th century introduced radio and television. These broadcast technologies proved less useful as a tool for criminals, since broadcast media largely removed the element of anonymity that letters and phone calls can afford.
Then came the internet. Your dad might have called the whole thing a scam in the 90s, since he had a perfectly good set of encyclopedias in his study.
The internet wasn’t a scam, and it turned out to be a profoundly powerful technology. One which afforded more anonymity, with a broader global reach, than ever before … which did empower a whole lot of scammers. In the 25 years since you closed your first AOL account, we’ve gotten a lot more savvy about how to use this powerful tool. Our email service providers have developed spam filters that work pretty well. We learned that PASSWORD is not a good password. We know not to download files from sources we don’t know and trust.
In the 21st century, the scary new technology is blockchain. How should you respond to the naysayers who think it’s a scam?
Read the rest at Lido Nation: